Innovation is something applied in a new place - whether new people, process, institution etc.
Participation is not the same as negotiation
Innovation system thinking is about a continuous, collective process
We need champions at various levels in this process (also in Africa RISING)
Such processes also need strong facilitation capacity, often lacking at local level
Innovation systems sometimes work in parallel but they would gain by being connected with one another
We have to draw lessons from the past - and yet also grapple with these issues in this group
In Africa RISING we need to find ways to combine typologies that help as entry points and those that help for scaling up and assessment of lessons.
Fishbowl discussion
What is innovation?
I made it very simple in my mind, the people who are involved in te process do something new, it could be people, a process, an institute, it could be done technologically or traditionally, but when we do something new I call it innovation.
The word participation is when somebody participating in some agenda, whereas in innovation system thinking, it is collaborating in research for development, farmers could participate in the process,
Is negotiation participation?
You participate in the negotiation but it doesn't necessarily mean negotiation
Innovation system thinking is a collective process
Innovation system engage people to participate in the process
One thing which is good about innovation system is that it creates a certain awareness...
Technologies can be invented but unless they are adopted and put in place and change something they will not be called innovation
Innovation systems are not perfect. The whole idea is to find ways to make it function better
The process in the innovations systems is continuous
The lack of knowledge and connection b/n people is the failure of the innovation system
There is a need for champions in the process, who should lead the process (also in the case of Africa RISING)
You can champion to lead the technology and the process
Who should do it? It could be done by researchers, local people, a local government body etc.
In this process we need multiple champions, we need different people who know the technology, the politics and the process
We need very strong champions to push the process forward
What is special about agriculture, agricultural technologies, what is different about it?
Dissemination platform is different from innovation platform, innovation platform will not be done with one click it needs engagement and collaboration
Coming back to problem of the participation, where is the capacity to do this? There is no strong capacity at local level to engage in this process
Having champions is very interesting thing, it will bring a new energy and understanding of the platforms and their dynamic structure
With regards to the water and land innovation system platform, how did you identify your entry point?
For our case the entry point was developed by us but very quickly the issue moved to marketing and then to big institutional issues
What is the definition of the entry point? Usually the entry point is the project
In the case of Africa RISING, we need to deal with different CG centre partnerships
Let us think about we want to do with innovation system, go and talk to different actors, could be the community, local government body and researchers, then you will develop the agenda
The diversity thing is interesting, with IP specially in Ethiopia dominated by the public sector
Local level platforms, trying to get them to be aware of the diversity, diversity of the community they are working with. And the diversity of the stakeholders
There is some innovation systems which exist locally but the process could be further expanded
Different innovation systems happen with different actors, they might not be linked
A lot of localized innovation systems would be successful if we integrate them with other systems environments
The World Bank innovation system has nothing to do with local innovation systems
Commentary by selected people: Ann:
Fascinating process to follow. We are recreating an approach to participatory research and development which is hopefully appropriate for our purpose. Perhaps we have not drawn enough upon lessons from the past. But we have to go through this process about why a typology etc.
Diego:
We were aiming of having sthg concrete but we ended up with a lot of discussions. The typologies discussion is mixing typologies to describe your system and typologies to scale things up. We were overlapping on these two because we didn't make this distinction. But how will Africa RISING make use of the typologies?
Peter:
We did identify these two dimensions for typologies. There is a process we have to go through to combine technologies etc. around on-farm technology adaptation/endogenous innovation etc. and that will ultimately inform how we are going to scale (if we are). There might be different typologies for different purposes. We've had some very interesting discussions. Perhaps we can explore more how the perspectives could be combined. The overall objective of both approaches (presented by Ken and Ann) is quite similar in some way.
Next Wednesday we will start step 0. We need to implement these typologies - how to do it? Having some kind of methodological comparison and identifying complementarities between the two would be great.
Diego:
We have to start - we don't need a perfect approach, we'll try to learn from and improve previous approaches.
Developing a R4D approach at farm-level - consultation and writing workshop
Info centre break out room, 13-14 September, ILRI EthiopiaBack to the event agenda
Summary:
Fishbowl discussion
Commentary by selected people:
Ann:
Fascinating process to follow. We are recreating an approach to participatory research and development which is hopefully appropriate for our purpose. Perhaps we have not drawn enough upon lessons from the past. But we have to go through this process about why a typology etc.
Diego:
We were aiming of having sthg concrete but we ended up with a lot of discussions. The typologies discussion is mixing typologies to describe your system and typologies to scale things up. We were overlapping on these two because we didn't make this distinction. But how will Africa RISING make use of the typologies?
Peter:
We did identify these two dimensions for typologies. There is a process we have to go through to combine technologies etc. around on-farm technology adaptation/endogenous innovation etc. and that will ultimately inform how we are going to scale (if we are). There might be different typologies for different purposes. We've had some very interesting discussions. Perhaps we can explore more how the perspectives could be combined. The overall objective of both approaches (presented by Ken and Ann) is quite similar in some way.
Next Wednesday we will start step 0. We need to implement these typologies - how to do it? Having some kind of methodological comparison and identifying complementarities between the two would be great.
Diego:
We have to start - we don't need a perfect approach, we'll try to learn from and improve previous approaches.